The Fixer Upper

by Judith Arnold

  But she didn’t see much value in arguing about it. If Reva had discussed the outing with her, she would have given her consent. “Will Kim be there?”

  Reva shrugged. “She can’t come. Her sister’s playing in some stupid recital. I’m just, like, gonna hang with some other kids.”

  “What other kids?” Ashleigh with the black nail polish? Libby wondered.

  Reva’s shrug this time was accompanied by a look of transparent annoyance. “Some Hudson kids.”

  Libby considered pressing her, but saw only flaring tempers and a contest of wills at the end of that route. Hudson kids were generally good kids, she reminded herself—and Reva was a good kid. And the day was sunny and Reva knew Central Park. “What time are you meeting these Hudson kids?”

  “Around noon. So Aunt Vivienne—” Reva turned the tables on Libby “—Mom went out with this guy and she made me babysit for his kid.”

  “You went out with a father?” Vivienne seemed to find this shocking, for some reason.

  “His son is ten years old,” Libby said. “And when we came back home,” she added, slanting a glare in Reva’s direction, “this poor, put-upon babysitter was busy playing computer games with him.”

  “He’s pretty good at Space Colony. That’s kind of like the Sims, only in outer space,” Reva explained.

  “I like the Sims,” Vivienne remarked. “Maybe I’d like Space Colony, too.”

  “Yeah, it’s a good game. I just watched him play awhile—until Mom and his dad got back.”

  “So, who is this man?” Vivienne directed her question to a space midway between Libby at the table and Reva, who had hoisted herself up to sit on the counter. Obviously, Vivienne assumed that if Libby didn’t answer, Reva would.

  “He’s a fireplace guy,” Reva obediently told her. “His kid applied to Hudson.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Reva was chewing. Libby had to field this question. “Ned Donovan.”

  “Ned Donovan?” Vivienne’s voice rose to a coloratura pitch. “Irish?”

  “I think he’s American,” Libby said dryly.

  “Still, Donovan…that’s not a Jewish name.”

  “No,” Libby said. “He’s not Jewish. He’s from Vermont,” she added, hoping that would forestall further questions.

  “Vermont? They don’t have Jews in Vermont, do they.”

  “In the big cities, maybe,” Libby said.

  “What big cities do they have in Vermont?”

  Libby sent Reva an imploring gaze. Reva was clearly not inclined to help her mother. She only grinned before taking another hearty bite of her bagel.

  “Burlington,” Libby finally said, because Vivienne’s frown was intensifying by the second. Were there any other cities in Vermont? Did Burlington even qualify as a city? Did Libby care?

  “What does he look like?” Vivienne pressed. “Does he look Irish?”

  “What does Irish look like?” Libby retorted. “Give me a break, Viv. He came over to check out the fireplace. Then we took a walk.” She edited out the part about their having a drink in a bar, because Vivienne would probably consider that tawdry, and she edited out the part about the kiss, because that would freak out everybody, including her. “And then we came home, and he picked up his son and left.”

  “You took a walk? What kind of date is that?” Vivienne glanced at Reva. “He sounds cheap. Harvey Golub, you’re talking mink coats. And this guy’s idea of a date is to take a walk?”

  “It wasn’t a date,” Libby said with finality. She might not be able to convince herself of that, but surely Vivienne should be easy enough to fool. The woman was eating Libby’s bagels, after all. The least she could do was believe Libby. “Reva, did you tell Aunt Vivienne about your solo?”

  Reva leaped off the counter, suddenly too excited to sit. She talked about the solo. She sang it. She described the auditions, did a hilarious impersonation of Muriel Froiken, sang her solo again, analyzed whether she should try to add a British accent to her pronunciation “because Tommy is set in England” and went on at such length that Ned Donovan, the cheap Vermont Irishman, was forgotten. By the time Reva wound down, Vivienne had to leave to get to synagogue if she hoped to catch any of the service.

  Good work, Libby silently praised her daughter. Dating might not be so difficult if she could count on Reva to distract Vivienne. Not that Libby wanted to keep Ned a secret from them—not that she was dating him, anyway—but until she knew what the hell was going on in her life, she saw no reason to let anyone else meddle in it.

  Reva really wished Kim had been able to join her, but she had that stupid recital to go to. “My sister’s playing Schoenberg,” she’d told Reva. “So, like, even if she plays everything perfectly it’ll sound awful. But I’ve got to go, my parents said. Besides, you don’t want me tagging along if you’re going to be with Luke Rodelle.”

  “I don’t think it’s a date,” Reva had explained. “He didn’t ask me like it was a date.”

  “But he asked you for a Saturday. That means it’s a date.”

  Reva doubted that. But even if it was a date, she would want Kim along for moral support. She had never gone on a genuine date before, but she’d heard around school that bringing your best friend along on a date was perfectly acceptable.

  If only Kim’s sister didn’t have to play Schoenberg. Reva wasn’t sure who Schoenberg was, but if Kim said his stuff sounded awful, it probably did.

  Luke had said he’d meet her at the Imagine mosaic at one, but Reva had told her mother noon so she’d have an excuse to leave early. She’d been too restless in the apartment, pacing her room until she stubbed her toe on her night table, then schmoozing with Aunt Vivienne, then wandering into the living room and trying to picture the fireplace green. “A dark green, with lots of veins,” her mother had described it last night. Dark green with lots of veins sounded disgusting, like a monster in a cheesy horror flick. “If you’d like to see the marble, get the flashlight from the kitchen and crawl into the fireplace. You’ll find a couple of spots where Ned scraped off the paint.”

  One thing Reva wasn’t going to do was crawl into the fireplace. Even though she couldn’t remember a fire ever blazing there, the whole idea of wedging herself into a place where stuff was supposed to burn grossed her out.

  In order to avoid a fight with her mother, she wore her fleece jacket even though it was too warm, and she took the cell phone with her. The ten-dollar bill she’d earned doing nothing last night was stuffed into her purse, along with her sunglasses, lip gloss and a tube of mascara, which she’d apply to her lashes once she got far enough away from the house.

  She had time to kill, so she headed to 72nd Street and window-shopped. Too many of the stores had been there forever, like even Grandma might have shopped there when she was Reva’s age. Broadway had much cooler stores, but Broadway wasn’t going to lead Reva to the park.

  While she walked, she plotted in her mind how she ought to act with Luke. Friendly but not too friendly. Like she understood this wasn’t a date, unless of course he took it in a major date direction, in which case she’d just go with the flow. Up to a point, of course. This was the first time she and Luke were actually together, and she wasn’t going to do any of that stuff that Larissa LeMoyne and the other divas were rumored to do. Monica Ditmer had told Reva that the divas did it to guys with their mouths, which struck Reva as remarkably disgusting, plus maybe it could affect your voice. Like, imagine if you were about to sing your Tommy solo, but your voice wouldn’t come out right because your throat was all clogged with boy gunk. Gross.

  Reva didn’t even know why she was thinking about it. This was not a date.

  The showcase window of a shoe store that specialized in really ugly footwear—fat, rounded toes, thick brown leather, flat heels, the kinds of shoes her mother would probably love—was trimmed in shiny chrome, and Reva used the chrome as a mirror to put on her mascara. Just a light touch to darken the tips of her lashes. She didn’t want
to come across as Goth or anything. It wasn’t like she was trying to impress Luke with her eyelashes, anyway. She just happened to look better with a little mascara on. And her lip gloss. She wore a shade that was the same color as her lips, only more so.

  And if he wanted to fall in love with her, well, she wasn’t going to stop him. Even though Reva didn’t hang out with the dating kids, and she didn’t go down on boys and she was actually kind of a total dork in some respects, Luke might just like her. Stranger things had been known to happen.

  She checked her watch and quickened her pace. She didn’t want to arrive at the Imagine mosaic ahead of Luke, but she didn’t want him to wait too long, either. She always thought girls who deliberately made guys wait for them were bitchy.

  She hit Central Park West at exactly one o’clock. Perfect timing, she thought, slowing her stride down a little. She didn’t want him to think she’d raced to reach his side, either.

  The crowd in Strawberry Fields was small, nothing like the mobs that filled the plaza by the Band Shell to listen to Darryl J, but that made sense because there was nothing to do except stare at the Imagine mosaic and feel sad and maybe leave a candle or a dead flower or something. Reva had no difficulty spotting Luke, because he was tall and had long floppy black hair. She was glad she hadn’t arrived too early.

  Drawing nearer, she realized he wasn’t alone. Katie and Matt Staver were with him, and—oh, shit—Micah Schlutt.

  The Staver twins were okay. Reva had never heard them make belching noises or anything. But Micah? Yuck. And how had this turned from Reva taking Luke to hear Darryl J into a fricking group activity?

  Disappointment settled like a cold, wet towel on her shoulders. She ducked behind a tree for a minute and took a deep breath. She’d known this wasn’t a date. She’d known it all along. But maybe she’d hoped, just a little bit, that it would be a sort of date because she would be graduating from the lower school in a matter of months and she’d never gone with a boy and Luke was tall and quiet and kind of nice.

  And he hung out with Micah Schlutt, she reminded herself.

  Her eyes got a little misty, and she batted them quickly. Tears would not do, especially when she was wearing mascara. She didn’t want to wind up with black schmutz all over her eyes.

  Okay. She was going to be okay. This had never been about Luke, anyhow. It was about Darryl J, the guy she really loved. Today was about expanding Darryl J’s audience, getting him on more people’s radar, maybe scoring him a gig at the Hudson School, although he seemed way too cool to perform there. The moment Luke saw her and Darryl J together, he probably would figure out that he was way down on her list. Her heart belonged to Darryl J. And she’d get to see him today, and maybe he’d remember her name, even if she didn’t put a dollar in his case. Which she couldn’t, because she didn’t have any singles. Just the ten-dollar bill her mother had given her last night.

  Squaring her shoulders, she tossed her head to get her hair to lie smoothly, and stepped back onto the path that led to the mosaic. Luke spotted her first and waved. Then Katie jogged over to her. Reva liked Katie, even though she was too rich. She couldn’t help it that her ancestors came over on the Mayflower or something. She and Matt spent summers on Nantucket, which seemed like such a cool thing, except it meant they never could hang out with their school friends during vacation. Katie once confessed to Reva that she wished she could stay home in the summer and just do New York things.

  Matt Staver greeted her with a cheerful, “Hey, Reva.” Micah didn’t make any belching or farting noises. And Luke had an awfully nice smile, even though Reva hated him for having brought so many people with him.

  “I can’t wait to check out this musician,” Katie babbled just as Luke said hi, so Reva almost didn’t hear him. “Ashleigh Goldstein said he was really good.”

  “He is,” Reva said, feeling superior because she was the only one in the group who knew just how good Darryl J was.

  “We’re all on the dance committee,” Katie continued. “So we all have to hear him before we can even talk about hiring him. I’m not sure if the school will let us hire a singer. But they’ve got a budget for a deejay, so I don’t see why we can’t use that budget for a singer, instead. How much did they budget for the deejay?” she called to Matt as the group started down the asphalt sidewalk toward the Band Shell.

  “A couple hundred bucks or something,” Matt said. He and Micah flanked Luke, with Reva and Katie a few steps behind them. That wasn’t right. Reva should be in front, since she was the one who knew Darryl J.

  But she couldn’t just elbow her way through the guys. Sooner or later they’d figure out that she should take the lead. In the meantime, she was just going to stay cool.

  What a joke, the boys all together and the girls all together. And to think Reva had wasted a minute of brain time on the idea of going down on a boy. She would never do that. Never. Boys were so dumb, why would you let them put that part of them in your mouth?

  “We just want to do something different,” Katie continued. “Nine years we’ve all been in that school, most of us anyway. We started in kindergarten, and this is our last winter dance, and you know? It’s like, let’s do something different for once in our lives.”

  “Darryl J would be different,” Reva confirmed.

  “You ought to join the committee, Reva. You’re such an expert about music. I hear Froiken finally gave you a solo.” Katie wasn’t in the chorus. “Like, hello? What was she waiting for? The next millennium?”

  “There are lots of good singers in the chorus,” Reva said modestly. “She gave other people solos.”

  “Everybody knows you’ve got a fabulous voice. It’s about time, that’s all I can say. Hey, guys, do you have any idea where we’re going?” Katie called to the boys, who had stretched their lead.

  They stopped and turned around. “The Band Shell, right?” Luke asked.

  Reva wished she didn’t have to answer. She was still pissed at him, even though she knew she shouldn’t be. But she had to remain mature and above it all. “That’s right,” she said.

  He smiled again. She decided she hated his smile.

  The usual assortment of kite-flying dweebs and Frisbee throwers covered the Sheep Meadow. In another week or two, it would be too cold to hang out at the park. People would bundle up and use the paths only to get from one place to another. Reva wished Kim could be with her, enjoying what might turn out to be the last really nice park day of the year.

  As they approached the mall leading to the Band Shell, she caught an aromatic whiff from a vendor’s cart, hot pretzels and roasting chestnuts. She was too irked to have an appetite, and no one else was stopping to buy food. She wondered if Luke had intended to treat her to something, then stifled a sarcastic laugh. Of course he hadn’t. He’d brought the whole damn dance committee today. You didn’t buy a girl a snack while a committee was watching you.

  Beyond the vendor, Reva spotted the guy who juggled teddy bears. A few feet south of him was a guy in an Uncle Sam outfit doing an acrobatic dance on in-line skates. South of him was that dumb-ass mime, still trapped in his invisible box. Maybe it was sealed with invisible duct tape, Reva thought with a smile. Maybe it was actually an invisible prison cell. Maybe the mime was sentenced to invisible life.

  Music drifted toward them from farther down the path, but Reva didn’t recognize it. She heard two women singing in close harmony, accompanied by a guitar and a country fiddle. They sounded good, but they weren’t Darryl J.

  Behind them loomed the Band Shell, the huge, arched concrete stage. People stood around the singing women, gnawing on hot salted pretzels and nodding in time to the song. Reva edged past the crowd, then sprinted ahead of Luke and the other guys, searching the plaza.

  He wasn’t there. Not in his usual spot. Not in any spot. Darryl J wasn’t there.

  Shit. Luke was going to think she was a real loser now. Maybe he’d think she had totally invented Darryl J—although he’d heard about Darr
yl J from Ashleigh, so inventing Darryl J would have involved some ridiculous scheming and planning. And Reva had far more important things to do with her life than to pretend a nonexistent singer existed.

  “Where is he?” Luke asked.

  She surveyed the audience pit in front of the Band Shell, the grass and trees beyond, the path winding farther south. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice wavering. Shit, shit, shit. She couldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. Not here. She could fall apart when she got home, but right now she had to tough it out.

  Luke patted her shoulder, making her flinch. “Maybe he’s somewhere else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, maybe he’s playing down in Washington Square, or in a subway station or something. Does he only play in Central Park?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, hearing that quiver in her voice again and hating it. “I’ve seen him here a bunch of times.”

  “Well, if he’s not here, he’s not,” Katie said sensibly.

  “Why don’t we go look for him?” Luke suggested.

  “Now?” Reva peered up at him. He’d stopped patting her shoulder, thank God—she wasn’t a baby who needed to be comforted—but he was still close to her. Close enough to see her eyelashes. Close enough to see her tears if she let herself cry—which she absolutely wouldn’t.

  “Why not?” he said. “We could go down to the Village. Maybe he’s there.”

  Her mother would shit a brick if Reva went to the Village. But if she didn’t go, she’d be the biggest loser at Hudson, if not in the entire city. She was already under a cloud of suspicion for having dragged all these people to the Band Shell—not that she’d chosen to include the Staver twins and Micah—and Darryl wasn’t there. She could just imagine the scene at Hudson on Monday, when Luke and the others related to everyone in school how they’d schlepped all the way to Central Park to see this fabulous singer Reva was so high on and he wasn’t even there, and then she refused to go to Greenwich Village with them because she was afraid her mommy would shit a brick. Or if she phoned her mother on the cell phone to ask permission—they could make a big deal about that. “Reva Kimmelman can’t even take a subway downtown without asking her mother’s permission.”